12 Years a Slave

I took a mini-break from Italy to listen to one of the books on my TBR Pile Challenge list, 12 Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup.

Not only was it a fantastic book, I was so surprised to discover that it was an actual memoir, first published in 1854, a year after Solomon Northup was rescued and allowed to return to his family and free status in New York.

I read and was surprised to enjoy Uncle Tom's Cabin a few years ago, and so I couldn't help but compare the two works, published so closely together in time.  While Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel is powerful, you never forget that it is a novel.  Its sentimentality sometimes undermines the message, but Northup's narrative, which is told in a calm but resolute voice, is strengthened by the knowledge that it is not fiction but very sad fact.

I find it surprising and a bit troubling that I never heard of this book before the movie came out.  When I think back to high school required reading lists, this book, which delineates so well the curse that slavery cast over the United States, should definitely be part of every American's education.

Not only is Solomon's story compelling--being a freedman, captured and sold into slavery, set to work on plantation--but it documents how society worked in the 1840's and 1850's, the economic, physical, and agricultural drivers as well as the social and spiritual factors. Absolutely fascinating, and humbling as well. Books like this make you think how you would fare if challenged in a similar way--Solomon Northup is a hero, who balanced a strong will to live, unbreakable bonds of loyalty to his family, and a core of human dignity that wouldn't let him be treated as less than a man without fighting back.

A great book that I wholeheartedly recommend.

Classics Challenge Completed

I finished Romola by George Eliot this afternoon, which means I completed my Classics Challenge for 2012.

To recap, here are the books that constituted my challenge and my links to their reviews:

Silas Marner - George Eliot

This was my second time reading this book, and I loved it and appreciated it so much more the second time through.  A truly lovely tale of how love can redeem a lost soul.

Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck
Overall disappointing, but it was an early work of Steinbeck's and prefigured my favorite, Cannery Row, in several significant ways.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes - Robert Louis Stevenson
An interesting travel memoir, and another early work by a classic writer.  Walking memoirs evolved into one of my reading themes this year, and so this book fit into both classics and walking.

Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope
I did end up liking Barchester Towers more than The Warden, the first in the series, which I didn't dislike but I found the discussion of church politics in mid-19th century England to be a bit mind-numbing.  I thought the narrative voice to be calmer and less intrusive than in The Warden also.  Also, I became acquainted with two marvelously drawn characters, Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Slope.

Romola - George Eliot
Wow, this book has been a roller-coaster.  I thought I would loathe it based on the first few chapters, but then it got interesting and readable.  Halfway through, I was wondering why it was titled Romola as it really seemed more about Romola's husband, Tito, but then the focus shifted and I came to understand why it was titled as it was.  Romola is definitely cut from the same cloth as Dorothea Brooke, from Eliot's Middlemarch, one of my all-time favorite heroines, but in the end I found her a bit too saintly to be a really interesting character. Tito, on the other hand, was fascinating.  I'm now listening to a Great Courses lecture series on the Italian Renaissance to help me understand what was going on in the novel!

Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens
After a long hiatus from Dickens, an estrangement really, I decided to make up with the great egotist and read a book whose mini-series I have long wanted to watch. I enjoyed the book and mini-series very much, and was thrilled to discover the Little Dorrit and her family visited Venice, which happened to be another of my reading threads for 2012.

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
In my opinion, one of the greatest American novels ever written.  I came to it prejudiced against it, expecting it to be cloying, pedantic, and self-righteous. It was none of those, and really helped me understand the forces that led to the American Civil War, which happens to be another reading thread for 2012.  If you haven't read this wonderful book, I urge you to do so.  Should be on every high school reading list along with To Kill a Mockingbird.

My thanks to Katherine Cox for hosting this Classics Challenge and providing such wonderful monthly prompts.  I really enjoyed reading everyone else's classics reviews, and I look forward to another year of great classics reading and rereading.  Working on my 2013 list now!

Quotes from Uncle Tom's Cabin

This month's Classics Challenge is about picking a favorite quote from a classic and talking about it.

As mentioned in my previous post on Uncle Tom's Cabin, St. Clare Augustine is my favorite character.  The following quote is from the section of the book in which he tells his cousin, Miss Ophelia, how he came to be the cynic that he is.  Blessed with a sensitive soul, he lost the woman he loved, married one he didn't, and came to regret the life of inaction that he's been leading.  Tormented by the injustice he sees in his society,  he is unable to muster the energy to try to reform it.

Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in the story that is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living...

After St. Clare's heart was broken, he went through the motions of living--eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, etc.--but his spirit died and even though he was blessed with a wonderful angel of a daughter, Eva, who is the bright and shining example of how one can do good in the world and make a difference regardless of age or circumstances, St. Clare chose to live as an inactive cynic.  In a way, St. Clare's inaction is one of of the true crimes of the book--he neglected to act promptly and free Tom and his other slaves as Eva had requested as her dying wish and doomed him to his fate. 

If only he had listened to Miss Ophelia...

"But I want it done now," said Miss Ophelia.


"What's your hurry?"

"Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in," said Miss Ophelia. "Come, now, here's paper, pen, and ink; just write a paper."

Truly, "now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in." For Stowe, a lifelong activist who wrote a book that changed the world, this quote would work as her epitaph.